


the myths of separation

by pipistrelle



Category: Critical Hit (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Canon, Season/Series 04, Season/Series 04 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-08 16:58:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10391529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipistrelle/pseuds/pipistrelle
Summary: Trelle and Kammis have been on all kinds of adventures, but none as challenging or rewarding as each other. It's been a long, hard road, and it's not over yet. Chapter 4: A conversation outside a spooky castle.





	1. hearts can starve as well as bodies

**Author's Note:**

> I'm taking liberties with Trelle and Kammis' mysterious backstory, and I'm not all the way through Season 4 yet, but I couldn't resist writing some snapshots based on the Whitestone arc. Please forgive any continuity errors, and no spoilers please! Also thanks to shae for letting me babble at her for hours about the beautiful gay love story in a podcast she doesn't listen to. <3
> 
> Fic title from "Splittings" by Adrienne Rich, chapter title from "Bread and Roses".
> 
> Also, I cannot for the life of me remember if elves trance or not in this universe, and since they talk fairly often about Orem's trance but I'm pretty sure have never mentioned Trelle's, I'm assuming for the purposes of this fic that elves sleep normally and it's only eladrin who go into trance.

There's no sunrise in the Shadowfell. The cold gray pall of cloud never changes or clears, never gets lighter or darker. If there is any sun shining at all, it's impossible to pinpoint. Without any way to tell time, they have no choice but to walk until they're about to collapse from exhaustion, then sleep until they wake up, and then do it again, over and over, through dust and howling winds and the ghosts of trees. No one is sleeping much, and what sleep they do get is plagued by nightmares; Kammis watches her companions twitch and writhe and moan every time they stop to rest, watches them wake seeming more tired than before, and thanks Corellon that she doesn't have to sleep.

"It's not so bad for me," she tells the others, and that's true, but whatever power deadens the Shadowfell is seeping into her trance, too. By the third rest period she's fleshed out a complex theory of mental shielding and emotional attrition. "You see," she explains to Goober as they drag their feet through the omnipresent dust, "I'm still aware in a trance state; it's actually a form of meditation in which I practice some of the mental exercises that classical eladrin magic is based on. My mental and emotional defenses are just as high as they are in a conscious state, if not higher. So while sleeping makes the mind vulnerable, trance may actually have protective functions…"

Goober doesn't answer, but it helps to talk. Kammis has noticed that the rest of the party isn't talking as much as they usually do. She tells herself that it's just a side effect of the general malaise, but can't shake the feeling that it's a symptom of something more sinister. She tries to keep their spirits up, but she's never been very good at that sort of thing, so mostly she just talks, and the others stare back at her dead-eyed or plod along beside her, staring at the dirt.

By the fifth rest period she's run out of things to talk about besides psychomagical theories and the various applications of crystal arrays. Under anything resembling normal circumstances, the other members of the party would have revolted by now; it's a measure of the Shadowfell's numbing effect that they're letting her recite the textbooks she memorized at the Cerulean Academy without comment. It might have been nice, if it didn't make her feel like the only living creature on this entire godsforsaken plane.

They stop to camp almost without speaking, and silently go about the routine chores of dividing up rations, conjuring water, sharpening weapons. Silently, they split off one by one and lay down to plunge back into whatever nightmares haunt their private hells. Even Kammis is silent as she arranges herself cross-legged on a relatively dust-free patch of rock, slipping into a light trance, keeping her eyes open and her mind alert for movement. They don’t set watch shifts anymore. Kammis stays on guard all night, and the others wake every once in a while, breathing hard, and spend an interval huddled in the center of the camp staring into the darkness before they lay back down.

This time it's Trelle who wakes first. Of all of them, her journey back into consciousness is the most violent and least dramatic; suddenly she's bolt upright, frozen in terror, staring out into the darkness with wide eyes. She looks exactly like a roe deer that Kammis saw once in a secluded corner of the Spring Wood, in the split-second of quivering alertness before it bounded off into a thicket and disappeared.

After a moment she blinks and relaxes fractionally, then seems to notice Kammis' eyes on her. She stands, brushing the dust from her clothes, and pads across the camp to join Kammis at the edge of the circle of bedrolls. For a while they're silent, but it's a silence of choice, not numbness.

"Do you dream when you're in trance?" Trelle asks at last. Kammis glances over at her and she winces. "I'm sorry. That's personal. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I just wondered if you, you know --" she gestures back at the others, their pained expressions and clenched fists. "If you're going through this too. We haven't been talking about it. No one ever says anything, and it's…strange."

"It's this place," Kammis says. "It's doing something to us. It's happening to me too, just more slowly. To answer your question -- I don't dream, not the way you do. But I can feel whatever energy drain is working on us." She raises an eyebrow. "This is the most I've heard you talk since we've been here."

"It's better when I'm close to you," Trelle says vaguely. "Maybe since you're not as -- drained."

"Maybe. I've been thinking about some way of transferring whatever psychic resistance I have into a wider-area field, but I haven't figured out a way to do it without burning my brain out, and I'd rather avoid that if possible."

It's meant to be a joke, sort of. Trelle doesn't laugh, not that Kammis expected her to. Instead she shivers, drawing her knees up to her chest as a chill gust of wind sweeps down over the dust-hills to what Kammis has decided is the north. (Cardinal directions are useless on other planes, but it's the direction the sharpest winds blow from, and the direction they're going, so she thinks of it as north.) "I hate this wind," Trelle murmurs. "It never stops all the way, did you notice? Even when it's just a breeze, it's always so cold."

"You'd be warmer if you wore shoes," Kammis says absently. The wind is picking up; the period of relative calm they've been using to rest is coming to an end. The whirls and eddies of air are wreaking havoc on Kammis' hair, tugging it in all directions, and she has to mutter a word of elemental shielding to give it the chance to settle again.

"Kammis," Trelle says in a totally different tone, and Kammis glances over to find those wide dark eyes staring at her. "Have you ever had your hair braided?"

"No," Kammis snaps, then stops and considers, surprised by the forcefulness of her answer. "Eladrin don't braid our hair, generally. It's occasionally acceptable to tie it back with a ribbon or jeweled ring, but a braid is considered uncouth. If you need to maintain your appearance, you do it with magic."

"Well, you're not with eladrin now, and it might help to save your magic for when we really need it," Trelle says. "If we're being drained, there's no point wasting it, right? I could braid your hair and then you wouldn't have to worry about protecting it from the wind anymore."

Kammis thinks about it for a moment. The gossips back home would be scandalized, but what good will the purity of the Rivendorn name do her when she's a husk of a corpse buried under the dust of the Shadowfell? "All right," she says at last. "We can try it."

"Don't worry, I'll be careful. I know how much your hair means to you," Trelle teases. It's the first time Kammis has heard anything in her voice other than anger or despair, and she isn't prepared for the effect it has on her. She's glad to turn her back so Trelle can't see her face.

Kammis gathers her hair into a club at the nape of her neck and waits. Even though she's expecting it, the brush of Trelle's fingertips against her back makes her jump like a startled colt. Through the fabric of her dress Trelle's skin seems impossibly warm, as though she's running a fever, or as though she's been basking in the sunlight of a long summer day. As Trelle pulls Kammis' hair back and makes a few sweeps to gather up odd strands, Kammis has to make an effort to keep her ears from twitching and her breath from catching in her throat.

"I can teach you how to do this yourself if you want," Trelle is saying, sounding almost normal. "You'd want to start with a very basic braid, but since we have some time I want to try something more complex, since it'll be sturdier. If you don't like it I can always take it out. In elven history there's actually a lot of meaning behind different patterns, we all learn them at the same time we learn how to use a bow. It started as a sort of hunter's code…"

She talks like a frozen river thawing, like a crocus flowering for the first time after a long, hard winter. Even without looking at her Kammis can feel the relaxation, the release of pent-up life and energy as the Shadowfell relaxes its relentless grip on Trelle's mind. At the same time she can feel a physical reaction, the easing of tension in her shoulders as some of the warmth of Trelle's body seems to pass into hers wherever they make contact. _Maybe it's touch_ , she thinks. Maybe physical contact has some kind of insulating effect against the ambient despair, counteracting its attempts to isolate and numb them. That's a fascinating theory to explore, and most of her mind is busy exploring it while a small treacherous voice underneath her surface thoughts whispers _Maybe it's not touch; maybe it's Trelle_.

 "And now some twine to tie it off," Trelle is saying, and she tugs once more and says, "There! How does that feel?"

Kammis tilts her head back and forth experimentally, then reaches up to feel the unfamiliar loops and coils with the tips of her fingers. "Not bad," she says. "You said it's a code?"

"It…can be," Trelle says, and when Kammis turns around to look at her she's flushed a bright red. In contrast to the dead gray landscape, their dull grayed companions and the dull gray shadow of herself she'd been half an hour ago, she's positively radiant.

"What does it say?" Kammis asks.

Trelle flushes a shade brighter. "Well, this --" she reaches out and touches the highest section of the braid, "this is the knot that means 'hunting party', which is the same as 'friendship'. And this," moving down a few inches, "is my knot. And this," she tugs lightly, teasingly at the end of the braid, "is the pattern for… well, I guess it used to be the longest amount of time you could express on a length of rope, but now I guess it sort of means 'forever'."

"Trelle," Kammis says, and Trelle is still touching her hair, Trelle's wrist is still on Kammis' shoulder, so Kammis reaches up and wraps her hand around it. Trelle's skin is still strangely warm, and Kammis can feel her pulse beating steady and strong as a falcon's wings. Maybe it's stronger than it was an hour ago; she hasn't been checking the team's vital signs, but she makes a decision to start. It could be valuable data.

"Kammis," Trelle says, and Kammis suddenly realizes that even though Trelle is brighter and more awake than she's been in days, she's also taut as a drawn bowstring.

Kammis blinks, takes a breath, and slowly pulls Trelle's wrist down from her shoulder. She turns her hand palm-up, holding Trelle's palm in hers. "You're feeling better," she says at last.

"Yeah. Are you?"

"I think so. Yes. When we get home I'll write a treatise about the physiological effects of ambient Shadowfell magic, but for now I think we should do this every day."

"Okay. Maybe I should braid everyone's hair," Trelle says brightly. Her blush is fading a little now. As though talking about them woke them, Kammis can hear the others beginning to stir behind her. It'll be time to set out soon. Kammis doesn't move for a moment, lingering over the sensation of Trelle's palm and fingers pressed against hers, then pulls her hand gently away.

Trelle looks like she wants to say something, then takes a deep breath and sighs. "We should get going, right? The sooner we go, the sooner we'll be home -- if we ever make it home."

"We will get home," Kammis says firmly. "Thank you, Trelle. Maybe we can try some other -- experiments -- another time."

"Anytime you want," Trelle says. She stands, hesitates for a second and squeezes Kammis' shoulder, imparting one last burst of sunlight before she heads back across the camp to collect her things. The others are sitting up, blinking dully around at the unchanging wastes. Kammis makes it a point to brush against Goober while they strike camp, just to see what happens; what happens is a surprisingly noticeable tactile sensation (her skin seems to be suddenly more sensitive), but nothing like Trelle's summer-sun heat.

There are no conclusions to be drawn yet, she tells herself. Maybe it's an elf thing; maybe it's something Trelle as a person can do that no one else can. There are any number of reasonable thaumaturgical explanations. And yet…

Well, any treatise she writes on this phenomenon is certainly going to be interesting.


	2. a simple golden chain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "A gift to a lady, at a victory." - Ket, translating the runes on Trelle's amulet in episode 184.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Falling in love with an eladrin is one thing, but I imagine that getting one to date you is probably like herding cats. At least 30 or 40 sentient, magical cats.
> 
> This chapter was beta'd by the excellent the_capricious_one! Any remaining mistakes are my fault alone.

Flat on her back in the mud of a battlefield with a spectral scimitar falling towards her neck, all Kammis can think is that she should have seen this coming. It had all been going so well, the elemental legions had moved into position exactly as they'd planned, and the enemy line had seemed to be about to break. That was when she should have noticed it. There were signs -- there had to have been telltale signs of a feint, and she missed them, and now she's burned through every defensive spell she ever learned and she doesn't have a familiar to sacrifice its life for her this time and she didn't pay close enough attention and she's absolutely going to die.

Six inches from her bare throat the scimitar skews wildly, cleaving the trampled ground next to her head, and Kammis is staring up at the shaft of an arrow that seems to have sprouted from the monstrosity's writhing featureless face. Another arrow sprouts beside the first, and the thing begins to collapse into itself, losing cohesion and dropping apart into lumps of viscous black mud.

Kammis rolls to her feet. It's not as fluid a movement as usual -- she can feel something pulled in her left leg -- but it's enough to dodge the next spectral blade coming down, and she blasts that monstrosity apart with a burst of lightning. She whirls around just a millisecond too late to dodge the next sword, which rips her cloak and grazes her side and then _thunk-thunk_ there are two arrows in the monster's chest and it falls apart. 

A whistle like a hawk's hunting cry pierces the din of swords and screams. Kammis turns, wand at the ready, and sees a green blur hurtling towards her so fast that she barely has time to wrench her arm aside and avoid incinerating Trelle with an instinctive bolt of fire. Then Trelle hits her in the solar plexus and they're both down in the mud again, as another spectral blade whistles through the air where Kammis' head had been. Trelle rolls, comes up on one knee, and fires an arrow at point-blank range so hard that it punches right through the monster's head and arcs off into the murky distance. 

"Thanks," Kammis gasps. Her ribs ache from the force of Trelle's impact and she winces as Trelle grabs her forearm and hauls her up. Their immediate area seems to be clear, but a few yards off the battle is intensifying. "You're supposed to be reinforcing the water elementals --"

"I told you at the planning council, you shouldn’t have separated us," Trelle says. Her face is grimy with sweat and dirt and smudged warpaint, and a fierce streak of red runs down one temple from a cut over her eye. Her left cheek and shoulder are a mottled mass of bruises, but she doesn't seem to have noticed.

"I have half a legion of ghost archers protecting me," Kammis says.

"Oh yeah, and they're doing a great job! That's why you almost got killed just now!"

Kammis stares. "Are we going to have this argument again _now?_ "

"What? No! No, you're right, we should focus. But Kammis, if we're both alive later, there's something very important I need to talk to you about," Trelle says, and with the hand not holding her bow she grabs the front of Kammis' robes, pulls her forward and kisses her. 

At first there's only the absurdity of it: the faintly ridiculous thought _I am being kissed, by an elf I've known for less than a year, in the middle of a spectral battlefield while horrendous monstrosities are trying to decapitate us_. And she can still hear the roar of the battle crashing down on them, still smell the stink of blood and burnt residuum and cosmic horror, still feel the mud and sweat and grime and ochre caked on her own skin and Trelle's. And then she starts to notice the physical feeling of Trelle's lips, soft and warm and wet and tasting like copper (Kammis' own lip stings; she thinks she must have cut it on Trelle's bracer when Trelle pushed her down). And outside of all of that, outside of all reason and sense, there's the feeling that a golden flower the size of Kammis' whole body is bursting into full bloom from a seed in the pit of her stomach, and she's hot all over and everything that's ever happened in her life makes perfect sense.

Trelle pulls back a little and sighs, and for no good reason the sound makes Kammis shiver. "I've been wanting to do that for _months_."

"I think," Kammis says, and then stops. "I want," she tries, but that isn't right either. Finally she gives up and leans forward again, brushes her lips against Trelle's very softly, tasting the blood and grit and sweat but mostly that other, golden feeling, and then presses their foreheads together in the eladrin way. "We'll talk about this," she says. "Later."

Trelle shoves Kammis away a little, just far enough to bring up her bow and nock another pair of arrows, grinning with a huge fierce joy. "We definitely will. Now go get that artifact. I've got your back." 

* * *

 

The battle is won. The day is saved. It's strange how flimsy it all seems, how unreal. The grime and blood wash away, the wounds are bandaged and hidden from sight, and since the army was mostly ghosts and elementals there aren't even any touching scenes of reunions between the returning soldiers and their families.

Kammis finds herself thinking of her own family, which is more than a little strange. She hasn't thought of them much in the last eight months -- she hasn't thought of them much since she left the Feywild, actually. She didn't think of them on the eve of battle, there had been too much else to do. But now, sitting in trance position on the flimsy cot in her grand commander's tent, she finds her mind drifting back to her father's forbidding face, her mother's distant manner. She wonders if the battle she's just won would make any impression on them at all. Somehow she doubts it. Her victory certainly wouldn't mean nearly as much to them as the thirty seconds she'd spent with Trelle in the thick of the fighting.

The sounds of revelry drift in through the thin canvas walls from the camp and the town nearby. The noise would make it difficult to achieve a trance state, but Kammis isn't really trying to trance. It's the logical thing to be doing after such a strenuous battle, but she's far too restless. If she weren't a well-brought-up eladrin, she would be pacing. She could go out and be celebrated as one of the masterminds that orchestrated their victory, but the thought of the crowd is oppressive. On the table halfway across the tent is a jumble of maps and tools; there are half a dozen projects she could be working on, but somehow none of them seem interesting. Instead she sits and stares at the wall, waiting for the chaos inside her to coalesce into a decision.

Finally boredom grows to outweigh trepidation. She makes an arcane gesture with one hand and the array of magical items on the table rises into the air and fans out for her inspection. It's mostly loot of various kinds; rings, chalices, orbs of different types of crystal, a few scraps of horn or bone, coins from ancient crumbled empires. The kind of symbolically significant things that people tend to store enchantments in. (Not for the first time, she wonders when she'll find an adversary smart enough to store a rare enchantment in, say, an ordinary grain of sand or block of granite -- something less noticeable, at least.) She plucks an amulet down and wraps it in a square of cloth, gestures the rest back onto the table, then murmurs a spell to avert unwelcome eyes and slips out of the tent into the night.

She intended to just leave the trinket in Trelle's tent, maybe with a note of some kind, but as she brushes the flap aside Trelle bounds up to meet her. "Kammis! What are you doing here? Why aren't you at the party?"

Kammis masters the urge to freeze, forcing her shoulders and hands to relax. "I was about to ask you the same thing. I didn't think you'd be here, I was just going to leave this for you." She holds the cloth-wrapped gift in front of her like a shield. "I was going through the magical items in that cache we found, and I thought it might suit you." 

Trelle takes it from Kammis' hand and unwraps it. A concave disk of amethyst, several inches thick and bubbling faintly inside as though full of volatile liquid, glitters in the light of the tent's magefire lamps. "Oh, it's beautiful," she breathes.

"And it's enchanted. See, here --" Kammis tugs the cloth further aside, revealing the gold setting and chain binding the amethyst into a pendant inscribed with strange runes. "From what I've been able to discern, its main effect is to nullify poison."

"It's perfect. Thank you so much." Trelle throws her arms around Kammis. Kammis tries her best not to stiffen, and mostly succeeds. Trelle lets her go and backs off a step, and when Kammis manages to look at her face she sees that Trelle is watching her the same way she would watch a flock of birds to discern the treacherous, unseen currents in the air. 

Kammis says, "I think we should talk."

"Yes," Trelle says immediately. "Of course. Come in." She steps aside, motioning to one of the large pillows scattered around the floor. Her tent is much more comfortably furnished than Kammis', which isn't saying much, since Kammis' tent is barely furnished at all. Trelle flops down onto one of the pillows, resting her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, leaning forward to scrutinize Kammis as intently as possible. Kammis arranges herself more precisely, spending far too long fussing with the folds of her robes and tucking the hems under her legs.

At last Trelle says, "So this is about the kiss, right? I'm really sorry if I made you uncomfortable, I was just really excited -- you know how it is, in a fight your adrenaline is up, and -- I saw you almost get killed by that thing and that was the first thing I thought of, was that I'd never gotten to kiss you, and if one of us got killed then we never -- I'm sorry. I know you hate that kind of thing." 

"Don't be," Kammis says quickly. "Don't be sorry. It's -- it's okay." 

"Are you sure? Because you seem _really_ uncomfortable."

Kammis takes a deep breath. "I am… uncomfortable. But it's not your fault." 

"How is it not my fault? I'm the one who kissed you. I thought it would be something you wanted, I guess, because I've been wanting to for months and months, and I thought from the way you -- well, the way you looked at me, and everything we went through in the Shadowfell, and the fight with the scorpion thing -- well, it doesn't matter. The point is, I must have read you wrong, and --"

"What does the scorpion thing have to do with any of this?" Kammis demands.

Trelle stares at her, surprised. "That was the first time -- the first time I thought you really cared about me," she stammers. A faint flush rises into her cheeks. "When the scorpion thing stung me and you stayed up all night with me even though the others offered to take shifts."

"I'm physiologically incapable of sleep," Kammis says. "I had to stay up all night."

"Yeah, but you didn't have to renew the healing cantrips every hour and hold my hand the whole time."

"It made perfect sense," Kammis says, with a definite, unsettling feeling that her mouth is working independently of her brain. "You're a valuable asset to the team, and we needed you in peak condition, and I couldn't just sit there and watch you suffer and -- you were asleep. You were _delirious_. How did you know --" 

"I felt it," Trelle says. She's blushing furiously now, but that doesn't stop her. "I felt you holding my hand, and I know you touched my cheek at least once, and -- look, I had some weird poison-dreams that night, but I know what I felt, and -- the point is, clearly I was wrong about that, and a whole lot of other things, and I'll understand if you never, ever want to talk to me again." 

"I think," Kammis hears herself say, "that you weren't wrong. About any of it."

"Oh," Trelle says. Then, " _Oh_. You mean -- you --"

"This isn't how it's supposed to go," Kammis says, her voice uneven. "There's a -- a way to do things. A protocol. There's supposed to be a courtship period, and proper rituals. My parents have probably betrothed me to someone back home. An adventure is one thing, but I never meant to --" she stops short as though she's run out of breath. It takes her a moment to say, "to fall in love." 

"With me," says Trelle. 

"With _anyone_."

 "But it's especially weird with me," Trelle says slowly, "because I'm an elf. Right?"

"No," Kammis lies.

Trelle is staring, but not with the mixture of hatred and disgust that Kammis feared. Her hands are clenched in her lap, her eyes wide and starting to look watery. Kammis can't tell whether she's heartbroken or pitying. "It's okay," she says at last. "I understand."

"No, you don't," Kammis snaps. That seems to shock Trelle out of her tears, at least. "You don't understand. _I_ don't understand. There are things you don't know about me, Trelle -- we barely know each other at all, actually. Everything I've ever learned is telling me that we shouldn't be doing this. That I shouldn't be doing this. I shouldn't be sitting here talking to you, and I definitely shouldn't want to kiss you again."

Trelle is very still. "But you do?"

"It doesn't make any sense. I'm a wizard and an eladrin. I'm supposed to be in control, I'm not supposed to want -- this." Kammis waves her hand in a vague motion encompassing the space between them.

"You mean, an elf girlfriend? Or any relationships at all?"

"I don't know. Either. Both."

"Kammis," says Trelle, "has there been one single part of _any_ of this that's gone the way it's _supposed_ to?"

"No," Kammis says grudgingly. "I guess not."

"And you're a wizard -- an amazing wizard. You have all these incredible powers, and -- you know so much about magic, but you know, sometimes, no matter what you do, magic just does what it wants instead of what it's supposed to."

"See, that's just it! Magic _doesn't_ do that, it's a common misconception based on the variability of magical effects. There are patterns in everything, and if magic isn't behaving the way you expect then it's because you don't fully understand the pattern you're trying to force it into, or it's being influenced by a deeper pattern that follows different rules, and..." she trails off. "You're saying that this is --"

"I'm saying I love you," Trelle says simply. "I don't need to know why. I don't need to know everything about you, because I know how I feel about you. And if you know how you feel about me, isn't that enough?" 

Kammis drops her head into her hands. "I don't know."

"Well, it's enough for me." Kammis hears the faint rustle of movement, and then Trelle is kneeling in front of her, so close that Kammis can feel the heat from her skin and smell the faint hints of pine and beeswax that seem to cling to Trelle no matter what she does. Kammis nearly flinches; Trelle is closer than anyone has any reason to be, closer than she's supposed to allow anyone to be, far closer than propriety demands. They've fought together, traveled together for months, shared a tent occasionally and a bedroll twice, and since it seemed necessary it never bothered her much; but Trelle's unnecessary closeness is a terrifyingly significant thing, and Kammis takes in a breath to tell her to move away but lets it out again without speaking.

Then Trelle's hand lights on her knee, and at her touch all thoughts of propriety start to grow translucent and fade, like ghosts at the sunrise. "Listen," Trelle says. "You are the most brilliant person I've ever met, but I think you might be overthinking this. Whatever you're worried about, we can handle it."

Kammis looks up. Trelle's stare is more intense than she's ever seen it, but she finds it strangely comforting; usually when people look at her with any interest it's because they're appraising her abilities or her potential to grant them social advancement. No one has ever focused even a fraction of Trelle's warmth and genuine concern on her, not even her brother.

After a moment of silence, Trelle asks, "Do you want me to leave?"

"This is your tent," Kammis points out.

Trelle rolls her eyes, impatient with such trivial details. "Do _you_ want to leave? Do you want to go away and never see each other again, and just write sad poetry forever about what might have happened?"

Kammis hesitates for a moment, as though considering the matter thoroughly. Finally she says, "No."

"Okay. So then if I'm in love with you, and you're in love with me, why can't we be together?" When Kammis doesn't answer right away, Trelle adds softly, "Do you _want_ to be with me?"

"I…" Kammis reaches out as though to touch Trelle's arm, then stops and draws back, thinking better of it. "I want to. I'm not sure I know how."

"Oh," Trelle sighs, and to Kammis' surprise she relaxes completely. "That's the easy part."

"It is?"

"Yes." Trelle reaches out and gently takes Kammis' hands in both of hers. "We'll start with the simple stuff. Is this okay?" She squeezes Kammis' hands.

Kammis lets out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. "Yes." She leans forward, pressing their foreheads together. The tip of her nose brushes against Trelle's, and the periphery of her vision is nothing but green, and somehow this is more exhilarating than any battle she's ever been in.

"Can I kiss you again?" Trelle asks. "I promise it'll be better this time."

"Yes," Kammis says. She's about to add that she doesn't know how it could possibly be better this time, but then Trelle's mouth is on hers and she learns that, incredibly, it is. 

Trelle pulls away at last, breathing hard, a triumphant smile on her face. "You should be able to have what you want, Kammis," she says. "We both should. Is this what you want?"

"Yes," Kammis answers, and this isn't how anything is supposed to happen and it isn't how she envisioned this evening or this conversation, but she's studied magic long enough to know that some things are both inexplicable and irrefutably self-evident.

"Are you sure? You've got kind of a weird look on your face." 

This time it's Kammis who initiates the kiss.  "Yes," she sighs against Trelle's lips. "Yes."  


	3. as would a rose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being an embarrassing girlfriend is what Trelle was born for.

"I don't know what you're so worried about," Trelle says. "Those guys didn't even speak Elven."

Kammis lets herself fall back into the inn room's seedy armchair with a sigh. "They didn't need to speak Elven. Do you know what Elven sounds like to non-fey?"

"Like….talking?"

"No. Not like talking. It sounds like…like the babbling of a wild brook. Like the wind blowing through the leaves of the Spring Wood. Like all kinds of…soft and fluffy things."

Trelle looks up from fletching arrows. "But if all Elven sounds like that, I don't get why --"

"That's what ordinary Elven sounds like. Calling someone 'honey bunny' and 'sweetheart' in Elven sounds a thousand times worse."

"You're embarrassed!" Trelle says, delighted.

"You impaired my efficiency," Kammis corrects her. "I was trying to intimidate the information out of them, and you were being so -- so _cute_ , I'm amazed we got anything at all."

"Are you saying you don't think I can be cute and terrifying at the same time?"

"You know I didn't mean it that way," Kammis starts, but it's too late. She glances up just in time to see Trelle scatter half-fletched arrows across the floor, and then her lap is full of warm, laughing elf.

"Tell me you weren't embarrassed," Trelle demands. Her knees are straddling Kammis' hips, her hands on Kammis' shoulders, pinning her into the overstuffed armchair as skillfully as a lynx would pin a hare. "Go on, look me in the eye and say it. 'I, the great and mighty Kammis Greyborn, am totally fine with being called pet names in public, and I'm not worried at all that my girlfriend is cuter and more terrifying than me.'"

"First of all, I don't talk like that. Secondly, maybe I am fine with pet names when they're not in the middle of an interrogation, and third --"

Trelle kisses her. They haven't been doing this for very long, but Kammis learned quickly that Trelle kisses the same way she does everything else; with single-minded dedication and boundless enthusiasm.

"So you're not embarrassed?" Trelle asks as they break apart, breathing hard. Trelle's face is flushed, and her pupils (which are always fascinating to Kammis; they're so much more reactive than normal eladrin eyes) seem vast. "We're not in an interrogation now," she says softly, her breath warm on the bare skin of Kammis' collarbone. "So you don't mind me calling you honey bunny? Or my fierce golden bird of prey? Sweet peach? The apex predator of my heart?"

"No," Kammis says, and is surprised to find that she really doesn't. They speak Elven to each other, of course, and the honeyed phrases in Trelle's lilting voice sound like the wild music of a babbling brook, or the wind rustling in the leaves of the Spring Wood. It sounds like home.


	4. shrouded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation outside a spooky castle.

"All right, this should be far enough," Ket announces, eyeing the twenty or so yards separating their little group from the door of the Autumn King's castle. "Everyone okay? Nobody drowsy?"

"Fine," Orem says. Kammis nods.

"Good." Ket scuffs his boots around a little, making sure the fog curling around his boots isn't hiding any nasty surprises, then settles down cross-legged and takes off his satchel. The pumpkin that's been following him all afternoon rolls up to a respectful distance and flops down at the edge of the fog. "We may be here a while, so we might as well be comfortable." He nods at Trelle, curled up fast asleep on the springy grass where Torq set her down. "Does she need a bedroll?"

Kammis shakes her head. "She sleeps on the ground all the time. She likes it better than bedrolls and sleeping bags. Believe me, I know."

"We've never seen her with a bedroll of her own," Orem says thoughtfully.

"I assumed she'd lost it somewhere right before we met her," says Ket. "You people are weird, you know that?"

"Not us," Orem protests, just as Kammis says " _We're_ not elves."

"Point taken." Ket leans back on his hands, watching as the two eladrin sit down, arranging themselves into trance positions, fussing over their clothes, preening in their separate ways. He doesn't even try to hide his smirk. "Of course, eladrin aren't weird at all."

"Of course not," Orem says firmly.

Kammis adds, "All of you are the ones that are weird."

Ket smiles at her. "Well, isn't this nice. We're really getting to know each other. Speaking of which, Kammis, want to tell us why we were lost in that horrible fog for the last six hours?"

"It was not six hours," Kammis says, still fiddling with a fold of her robe.

"Yeah, Ket," says Orem, "it was only like forty-five minutes."

"It was too much time out of my life that I'm never getting back." Ket jabs a finger at Kammis. "And you said it was your fault."

"I didn't do it on purpose. The Feywild can have unpredictable effects, and without any kind of basis for analysis it's nearly impossible to determine --"

"Oh, no. Don't try that on me," Ket interrupts. "I may not be an eladrin, but I'm not stupid. First you tell us all that feelings are bad, and we need to _control_ ourselves, and if we were just as reasonable and controlled as you everything would be _fine_ , but then when it's your feelings that get us into trouble suddenly it's 'the effects of the Feywild are impossible to determine'. I want _answers_ , damn it!"

"Hey! Lay off her, Ket, it's not her fault," Orem snaps.

Kammis waves him off. "It's all right, Orem." To Ket she says, "I understand you're frustrated. What I told you about the effects of uncontrolled emotions was…a theory. I thought it was a pretty substantial theory, since it was based on decades of experience with the Feywild, but clearly it needed some refinement."

"The greater fey love mixed feelings," Orem murmurs.

"Exactly." Kammis glances at him, then looks back to Ket. "Trelle has -- you guys have been traveling around in a way that is insanely dangerous and shouldn't even be possible. It's like if you decided that, I don't know, sailing in a normal ship was too slow, so you built a bomb shaped like a raft and tried to cross the ocean on that."

"I'm pretty sure we've done that at least once," Ket says. "You've met Randus, right?"

Kammis stares at him, glances at Orem for confirmation, then shakes her head. "Well, anyway. It's a really stupid and reckless way of getting around, that no one who lives in the Feywild would even consider, and yet it works for you, and I have no idea why."

"So really what you're saying is that you have no idea how this godforsaken place works, and you shouldn't be giving out advice on how to deal with it," says Ket.

"I thought I did," Kammis says stiffly. "I thought I'd been navigating it pretty well for two years, and now…" she makes a resigned gesture with one hand that for anyone but an eladrin would have been a shrug. "Now I don't know what to think."

"Well, I think we should keep following Trelle," Orem says. "She seems to have an, I don't know, some kind of instinct on how to work with the Feywild instead of against it. I mean, she helped you get us out of the fog, right?"

"Yeah, back to that," says Ket. "You never did tell us how we got out of the fog. Did you use some kind of advanced magical theory to figure out its principles and dispel it?"

Kammis hesitates for a long moment. "Something…like that."

"Wow. You know, for all the traveling I've done and all the people I've met, that's something I've never seen before."

"What, a fog-dispelling spell?" Orem asks. "We have to have seen one of those --"

"Not a fog spell," Ket says. "An eladrin blush."

Kammis' spine straightens in indignation, to the point where Ket is afraid she's going to start bending backwards to get her nose up in the air as high as possible. The very, very faint pink tinge to her cheeks, that a non-elf probably wouldn't even spot in the dim gloom of the Autumn Fields, gets a little darker. Orem chokes on a laugh, quickly turning it into a throat-clearing cough. "That's ridiculous," he says to Ket. "Eladrin don’t blush. Right, Kammis?"

Ket leans his elbow on one knee and rests his chin in his hand, beginning to enjoy himself a little for the first time since they arrived in this horrible place. "Don't look now, but I think Kammis might have invented it. I mean, you invented sword-magery, right? Maybe it runs in the family."

"Look. Trelle obviously told you about some of our -- history," Kammis says at last. "The last time we saw each other, before you guys found me, everything got very messy --"

"Oh, we know," Ket says. Orem throws a rock at him.

"And we had to straighten out a few things," Kammis continues, ignoring them both. "Messiness is one of the Feywild's favorite things to feed on. Once we cleared up what we wanted and how we felt, the Feywild smoothed out too."

"See, Ket? A perfectly reasonable explanation," Orem says. "You'll have to forgive him, Kammis. That's just Ket, always wanting to stick his nose into everyone else's business."

"It's not me, it's this place!" Ket bursts out. "If you and Trelle want to keep your love a secret, or whatever, then that's fine, _until it turns into a magical fogbank that breaks the laws of reality and makes people disappear_! Saying 'it's none of your business' doesn't cut it when feelings by themselves can eat people! I hate this place so much."

"You're just worried that you'll have to work out all of your messy feelings," Orem teases.

"Yes I am! I'm terrified! I am terrified that my feelings are going to turn into fog, or bugaboos, or magical pumpkins, or something even worse, and I know that by saying that I probably made it more likely to happen but -- aargh!" He picks up the pebble Orem threw at him and chucks it hard to one side. It hits the pumpkin dead center and bounces off into the mist.

"You're really gonna hate it when that pumpkin turns into something big and scary and tries to eat us," Orem remarks. "You could try being nice to it."

Ket drops his head into his hands. "I refuse to be nice to a pumpkin," he says into his palms. "If this place wants to mess with us so bad, let it. Maybe killing a giant pumpkin monster would make me feel better."

"I doubt it," says Kammis. Ket glares at her.

"Hey, Kammis," Orem says brightly, "Why don't you try waking Trelle up? Maybe it's been long enough that the spell's worn off. I'm sure she'd have a lot to add to this discussion."

"Yeah," Ket says. "Maybe you should kiss her. Isn't that how it usually goes? Fairy spell puts you to sleep, true love's kiss breaks it?"

"Shut up, Ket," says Orem. "Ignore him, Kammis, he's always like this when he's cranky."

"I'll show you cranky," Ket grumbles, mostly to himself.

Kammis leans over and shakes Trelle gently by the shoulder. Trelle squirms and grumbles, then opens one eye halfway. Encouraged, Kammis lifts her hand to Trelle's forehead and brushes the long green locks back from her face. "Hey, how do you feel?"

"You got caught by the enchantment on the castle," Orem explains as Trelle's other eye opens and she sits up, blinking and rubbing at her face with the heel of her hand. "Randus brought you down, and then he and Torq went back in, since they don't seem to be affected. We're waiting for them to come back."

Trelle stares dazedly at him. Her eyes are still red and itchy-looking, and seem unfocused as she gazes dimly around at the crops and the mist. Kammis reaches out again and gently touches her arm. "Trelle? Do you know where you are? Can you hear me?"

Trelle doesn't say anything, but a vague sense of recognition comes into her face as her eyes focus on Kammis. She yawns and scoots closer, then drapes herself over Kammis' lap like a contented cat in a sunbeam and falls asleep again.

"I guess the spell hasn't worn off yet," Orem says.

Ket grins at Kammis. "Your face is _amazing_ right now."

Kammis sighs deeply and rests one hand on Trelle's back, the other one gently stroking through Trelle's hair. Trelle nuzzles into the touch instinctively, and the faint flush reappears on Kammis' cheeks. "You want to know how we got out of the fog?" she asks. "Trelle figured something out that I should have told her a long time ago."

"That you're still in love with her," Ket says. "We know. Like I said, we're not stupid."

"Maybe not. But you're not as brave as she is, either. You're afraid of your feelings -- so was I. Corellon knows I still am. But Trelle isn't. That's why this place _works_ for her. That's what I was missing with all my theories. It's not just having feelings or not having them, it's about whether you fight them or whether you can be strong and brave enough to let them be."

"She said she feels stronger here," Orem muses.

Kammis gently trails her fingertips down the curve of Trelle's spine. "In the Shadowfell, she was so sensitive to the world that it drained her spirit the fastest. But I think that in the Feywild, she might be the strongest one of us."

"Oh, that's just great," Ket groans. He flops onto his back in the grass, staring up at the wispy tendrils of mist floating across the clouded sky. "Now I have to _accept_ my feelings. Have I ever mentioned --"

"You hate this place," Orem says, grinning. "We know."


End file.
